Chapter Text
I fight to keep sobs in the back of my throat. My breathing is shaky, uneven; vision blurry from tears; all of my limbs trembling. My whole body wants to break down in despair, but I can’t let it do that right now. There are things that need to be done first. “That spike. We should.. take it out.”
Pete inches forward and grasps onto the thing sticking out of Charlie’s torso. He gives it a forceful tug, but it refuses to let go of the seared flesh. I have to turn away as he wraps another hand around it and pulls harder. As he struggles, I look vacantly at the fence I had been knocked through not even ten minutes ago. I’m still terribly sore from it, and I’m left with a limp, but I know that it’s nothing compared to what Charlie had to go through. I could deal with the pain. I hear an awful squelching sound and Pete gagging. I look back to him; the spike is in his hands, and a trickle of bubbly, brown blood leaks out from the gaping wound it left behind. I look away again, though I’m ashamed to do so. I'm unable to escape the smell no matter what I do, however— God, it’s horrible. Death, in all its forms, has an odor that will put knots in your stomach, though by now I thought I’d grown used to it. But this corpse— Charlie— there’s something about this one that makes every fiber of my being shudder with dread.
Pete tosses the spike away, and it clatters against the bulkhead. I look back. Now he’s staring down into the palms of his hands, every inch of them dappled with little scarlet marks. The spike was serrated and had bitten into his skin like a thousand tiny needles. He’s quick to brush the pain off. I see Charlie in the periphery of my vision, though it's difficult for me to even accept that what I’m seeing is a human being, let alone my deceased friend. Hardened, black skin, crumbling away at areas to reveal pink flesh, still smoking and oozing. Hair burnt into a frizzy mess barely clinging to his scalp. A mangled, scarcely recognizable face, but one twisted into an expression of undeniable agony. It’s awful. All of it is just so awful to look at. But again, I only have to see the aftermath. Charlie had to suffer through the feeling. The feeling of being burnt alive. The feeling of being impaled through the abdomen. The feeling of dying.
After hesitating, Pete reaches out to Charlie and pushes him over, so he’s lying on his back. His once-navy blue jacket has been dyed a nauseating shade of ruddy brown by putrid, boiled blood. The malicious stench of death is even stronger now, seeping into every crevice of my weak lungs and festering there. I nearly throw up at the overwhelming assault of sensations, but I swallow it down.
“No..” Pete mutters, running his fingertips across Charlie's chest.
“What?”
He ignores my question, instead looking around him frantically, until he finds the cutlass he used earlier in the battle and picks it up with a shaky hand.
“No…” he repeats absently, eyes locked onto the sword. He’s become so distraught by what he’s seeing that I’m essentially invisible to him. I look down to the sword, trying to understand what he sees. Slathered all over the blade is a strange, viscous black liquid, unlike anything I’d ever seen before. At just the tip, a splash of vermilion blood. I don’t see it. Why is he so torn up over this?
Finally, he pries his focus away and looks up to me with the most sorrowful expression he’s ever worn.
“Tom… Did I kill him?” He asks in desperation with fearful, innocent eyes.
“What are you talking about?”
“I.. I stabbed him. I was only trying to..” He sniffles, the expression on his face turning from sorrow to terror. “Oh.. God…!”
The cutlass clatters down onto the deck, and Pete shields his face with his hands, crying. He tries his best to keep quiet but is failing terribly. Panicked and confused, I attempt to calm him, putting a hand on his shoulder as it rises and falls erratically with each pathetic whimper escaping his mouth. I look up around me. People have stopped what they’re doing to stare at us, a jury of a dozen eyes piercing into our souls. I.. I can’t allow Pete to be subject to their cruel judgement. I stand up and gently guide him onto his feet; he’s too distraught to try defying me. I take hold of his hand and make way to our cabin on the gun deck. Once I close the door behind us, he collapses back down onto the deck, wailing and sobbing and uttering incoherent sentences. I’m not really sure what to do for a few moments. Seeing him so heartbroken is bringing my own guilt to the surface; I can feel red, hot tears building up in the corners of my eyes. Did he really kill Charlie? I don’t know for certain, can’t know. But it doesn’t really matter to me. He’s dead, regardless. And I didn’t do anything to stop it.
“No, no, no, why..” Pete mumbles. “How could I.. Why didn’t I…”
I decide to give him what I feel he needs most in this moment: a hug. I kneel down before him, lean in, and wrap my arms around him. Tears begin to roll down my cheeks. I’m trying to provide him with comfort, but really, I’m seeking it out for myself too. Already the intense warmth of his body is putting me at ease, quelling the confusion that my mind is drowning in.
“…Pete.” I say in the gentlest voice I can muster, finally soothing his frenzied grieving into silence. He’s quick to accept the embrace, burying his face in my chest and clinging onto the back of my jacket with one hand. We cry. We do nothing but cry, for God knows how long. We cry until our faces are red and wet, until it hurts to breathe, until we’ve nearly forgotten why we’re even crying in the first place. We soon fall silent, but neither of us dare to leave our position, lest the anguish crush us where we sit.
Not moving his head away from my chest, he whispers quietly. “We’re terrible people.”
My eyes wander down to look at the top of his head. My heart aches for him. I can't imagine the guilt that's weighing down on him right now. “Don’t say that. The.. the fire was what killed him. It wasn’t your fault.”
“No… this isn’t about that.” He pulls away to look at me with eyes watery and full of hatred. Not hatred for me, but for himself. “I realize now that.. we treated him like shit, Tom. Teased him, mocked his interests, excluded him from the things we did. It was never-ending torment. And now he’s fucking dead… He died surrounded by people who didn’t respect him one bloody bit.”
My immediate instinct is to argue against what he’s saying, but the impulse fades away as I come to accept that he’s right. The things we said and did to Charlie were awful. We were terrible friends to him. ‘Friend’… I’ve considered him as one for as long as I’ve known him but… did he even think of us in the same way? I… I don’t know the answer, and that absolutely terrifies me. And now, we’ll never have the chance to rectify our mistakes...
No.
It wasn’t a mistake on our parts. We chose to treat him like that.
A sin.
That’s what it is. A sin God may forgive us for, but Charlie can’t. Shouldn’t. All I can do is nod my head in shameful agreement.There’s nothing that I can say in this moment, no words in my vocabulary to express the remorse I feel.
“We have to.. treat him well now. We have to make up for what we did to him. What we let happen to him. Even if he—“ he chokes on his tears. “Even if he’s just a corpse. He still needs to be looked after.”
Again, I can only reply with a nod, like some mute fool. Pete pushes himself up onto his feet and wipes his face with the sleeve of his undershirt. He extends a hand down to me and I gladly accept it. Now that I’m standing again, I can feel that the atmosphere of our cabin has already been made profoundly empty by Charlie’s absence. He’s never going to be in this space again. Never again make smug comments to us while perched up in his berth, never again sit at the desk to write another prose-filled entry of his logbook, never again snore like a hog while Pete and I are fighting to fall asleep. There’s a void in my heart now that he’s gone, a void much larger than I originally thought he’d leave. All of it makes me feel so utterly alone, as though Pete is the only other person in the universe with me— the only person who matters, anyway. I can’t let anything bad happen to him. I have to be better, be there for him, because I wasn’t there for Charlie when he needed me most.
“We should get his sheets while we’re here. So we can wrap him up.” Pete says with a still wavering voice.
“Right.”
I watch him pull the sheets down from the swaying berth above him. I want to say something to him, but I don’t really know what exactly. I can’t find the words, no matter how hard I search for them. He finishes folding the sheets over his arm and looks to me, ready to leave. I exit the cabin and he follows after me. My chance has passed.
We return to the orlop deck. Charlie’s still sitting there, next to the crab and the ghoul that rode it, all mired in a grotesque mixture of ash, water, and blood. Other crew members are busying themselves with mopping the blood away, pulling spikes out of objects, moving the bodies of their fallen companions. None of them speaking, none of them making any sudden movements, all of them almost like ghosts, seeming more dead than the corpses they’re holding. But there aren’t any real ghosts. None that I can see, anyway. Charlie’s still just a body, inanimate, unmoving, completely ordinary. He’s nothing more than the body of a friend who never knew what it felt like to actually be treated as a friend. We lay out the sheet on the deck next to him.
“I’ll get his shoulders.” I say. Pete moves into position, crouched over our… friend’s legs. I move into my own place and, in unison, we pick him up as gently as we can, but that doesn’t stop blackened flakes of cloth and skin from peeling away and fluttering onto the deck. We set him down on the sheet, then step back. Neither of us wants to start the process of wrapping him up. I’ve watched the carpenters do it a handful of times before, but neither of them are around now to show us how to actually do it. We just stand there, motionless.
“Y’know, you lads don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.” A voice offers from behind, startling me at its sudden presence. I recognize it as Hoscut and turn to see him. He’s trying to muster up a warm, sympathetic smile in spite of the tragedy, though his eyes betray his heartbreak. “We could handle it if you’d like.”
I want to speak but my tongue is paralyzed. All I can manage is a faint shake of my head. Pete gives him the answer I’m unable to.
“No, it’s alright, sir. We can do it."
We need to do it. It's the only way we can atone for our sins.
“…If you believe you’re up to the task, then go ahead.” Hoscut places a firm, reassuring hand on my shoulder. “Make sure your knots are tight.” The faint smile fades from his face, and he walks off to take care of some duties of his own.
Pete begins to bend down to grab one edge of the cloth, but I have to interrupt him as a thought flashes across my mind. “No, wait.” He stops, watching me pick up a cutlass off the deck, the one Charlie used. I bring it over and lay it down next to his body. “He gave his life for the ship. It would only be right.”
Pete gives me a small nod before taking hold of the sheet and pulling it across, at last obscuring Charlie’s disfigured form from my eyes. We work with more care and precision than we’ve put into any of the jobs we’ve ever been entrusted with by the officers. Soon enough, our friend is completely invisible, swallowed whole by the cocoon of dull grey linen we spun around him. I fetch a bundle of rope and wrap it ‘round a few times. Once I secure the last knot, I step back to check our work. A frown slips onto my face. It’s a bit sloppy, I think, but it’s sufficient enough to give Charlie a proper burial at sea. At least, I hope it’s enough. I mean, we can’t really undo it all and try again anyways. This would have to do.
We pick him up and maneuver up to the main deck. It’s slow and painful, what with Pete’s cut-up hands and my limp, and again I can feel the icy cold stares of the other sailors locked onto us. But we just have to persevere. Any inconvenience or discomfort we face is no matter; taking good care of Charlie and putting him to rest is far more important. Just as we begin to struggle with the weight, we reach the gunwale and rest him atop it. I look out. That emptiness from our cabin is back again. Everywhere around me is darkness, high up in the skies above my head, far below in the infinite abyss beneath my feet, stretching out into the endless horizon before me. It’s a hungry darkness, I decide. It wants to consume every person on this cursed vessel, every troubled past, every optimistic future. All memories erased, all hopes dashed. The darkness doesn't care about any of that, and it isn’t going to stop. It's a wicked creature with an appetite that can never be satisfied. I should’ve realized sooner that this darkness has been here the whole time, waiting to take us, in the form of the very sea that we sail on. I had to lose a friend to finally become aware of it. And now, we’re dropping his body directly into its watery maw.
Pete leans in towards the vague shape of Charlie’s head and whispers, loud enough for only Charlie’s ears and my own. “I’m sorry.” I understand one verbal apology is hardly enough to make up for what we said and did to him, but I still hope he could hear it somehow, wherever he is, if he’s anywhere at all. I don’t know where exactly Jewish people go when they die— I’ve forgotten Charlie’s explanation— but I can only pray that it is somewhere good, somewhere safe. He deserves it.
I look to Pete. He’s ready. I am too. At once, we both push, and Charlie slips away into the sinister blackness below. I hear a faint splash and have to step away from the ship’s edge, my legs as flimsy as a bundle of twigs. The reality of what we had just done is hitting me. Charlie’s gone now. He’s just gone. He doesn’t exist anymore. He’s more than just dead, he’s completely erased from our lives, according to the expectations placed upon us; we have to keep carrying on with our duties and somehow pretend his absence doesn’t affect us in the slightest. Pretend that watching him suffer a death agonizing beyond all creation won’t stay with us for the rest of our lives. Pretend that we aren't going to join him sometime soon, eaten by the monster that extends all around us for hundreds of miles.
“We.. we’re going to die, aren’t we?” I ask.
Pete looks at me with wide, sad eyes and a barely open mouth. He doesn't say anything, but I have the feeling that similar thoughts have been plaguing his mind. I have to think for a moment of how I want to continue speaking. I don’t know now, if we’ll ever make it back to England. A cynical, unrelenting entity constricts my chest with its tendrils, whispering into my ear that we won’t. The darkness has chosen the Obra Dinn as its prey, and it feels as though it won’t stop hunting us until not a single soul onboard is left alive. God, if we’re doomed to die on this awful ship, I can only ask you that I’m not left alone for long, in a world without Pete. I don’t know if I could bear it.
“It doesn’t matter to me.” He says, shaking his head.
“What?”
“…I don’t care how much time we may have. I just… I want that time to be with you.”
I understand exactly what he means by this. It had never really dawned on me before, but it feels right, like that’s how we were always meant to be. I was just too oblivious before to realize it. The words I’ve been unable to find all this time— the whole time I’ve known him— are coming to me at long last. I reach out and take both of his hands into my own.
“I love you, Pete. Promise me.. promise me that we’re never separated ever again.” I plead. “I’m scared… I don’t want to die like he did.”
As the words leave my mouth, I become vaguely aware that people are watching us, judging us, hating us. I don’t care anymore what they’re thinking, what they’re whispering to each other. I just want to feel safe for however long I have left. To hold onto some semblance of happiness, however ephemeral it may be. I reach out for another warm, tender embrace. He's eager to reciprocate, enveloping me with his warmth; it's almost as if I'm hugging sunshine personified. It's already beginning to make the cold, bitter darkness melt away. I can tell by the energy behind his movements that.. he's been yearning for this for a long time. And now that we're truly together after so long, I never want to leave his side. Maybe then, just maybe, we have a chance of making it back alive. I bend my neck down, venturing to give him a light kiss on the cheek.
“Don’t leave me.”